My right arm fell off today. Lucky for me, I’m left-handed.
In the accident that killed me I rocketed from the backseat straight through the
windshield—no seat belt, yeah, I
know—and the pavement sheared my arm to nothing below
the shoulder. Not torn off, but dangling by thin, precious little
bits of skin and bone and ligament. I had a closed casket, I’m
sure of it, because they never wired the arm or glued it or any
other pretty undertaker trick. I managed to crawl back out of
the ground without its help anyway, and of course after nine
perfectly uneventful years of fighting and dancing and hunting and getting by fine with
the left arm, the right finally shuffles its coil right on the banks of the Great River
County
Park’s not-so-Great River, smack in the middle of a meat run.
Joe, my boy, my backup, was not sympathetic in the least.
“You’re shaking,” he muttered, as he led the gang along the
riverbank, through the clearing that used to be the park playground. “Your arm’s shaking,
look. Is the big mean pointy-
headed deer that scary?”
Mags snickered, waddling past the rusty remains of the
jungle gym. Ben and Sam were right behind her, sniffing and
sniffing for living meat; fat gas-bloated Billy pirouetted in
their footsteps, and Linc brought up the rear with Florian,
our oldest and dustiest. I gave Joe a shove.
“Shut it,” I warned him, “or I’ll set Teresa on you.” I’d have
to find her first, to do that: Our big chief and cheese never
seems to show up for hunts anymore. Maybe she’s sleeping
in. Never mind that Florian, who’s got a couple of centuries
on her, still hauls his ass without complaining. “Now she’s
one mean pointy-headed thing I know you’re too hoo-yellow
to fight—”
Then a phantom dog got its teeth deep into my right shoulder, shaking and shaking, and
a tremor shot down to my knees
and back up again. The tremor became a whip crack and
something snapped painlessly in my shoulder, and my poor
useless deadweight arm broke off for good, wet purplish skin
sliding off in sheets as it hit the underbrush with a squish and
a thud.
The deer we’d had in our sights, foolish thing too stupid to
pick up the stench of death (ours and his), rocketed up and
bounded away faster than any undead could chase it. Ben
broke into the same slow, sarcastic applause I remembered
from when I was alive, when someone dropped a full lunch
tray in the middle of the cafeteria. An oak tree bowed under
Billy’s back as he leaned against it grunting and growling with
laughter; Florian’s dry, ancient mouth twitched, Sam and Ben
snickered, Mags giggled from deep in what was left of her
throat and Joe threw an arm around me, sprays of maggots
shooting from the rips in his leather jacket like little grubworm confetti.
“Congratulations!” he grunted around the smashed half of
his jaw, eyes glinting with a mocking pride. “Nine years of hauling around that useless
turd of an arm, and you finally drop it
in the dirt where it belongs—she’s a genuine rotter now, how
about it? Three cheers for little baby Jessica!”
The hip-hip-hoorays rained down and I booted his ass, or
tried to, while he laughed and stumbled in a mocking little
circle. My right shoulder still jerked and twitched. “I’ve been
a genuine rotter since I climbed out of the ground—I’ve heard
the stories Billy used to tell about you, ant farm!”
He just laughed harder, looping arms around my waist
from behind and whirling me until those poor maggots were
light-headed. “Ant farm?” He grinned. “That the best you can
do? And you know Billy’s a gassed-up liar—”
“I told her you cried yourself to sleep every morning after
you tunneled up, wailing for your mommmmmm-meeee.”
Billy smirked, rubbing his swollen blackened hands together
eagerly anticipating a fight. “Weeping and wailing like a worthless little ’maldie full of
embalmer’s juice—”
“Yeah?” Joe just grinned wider. His brain radio, the waves
of telepathic sound that help us talk around rotted throats
and tongues, veered into a hard fast electric-guitar screech
that could have been real anger, could have just been the
need to fight. “We’ll see who’s spitting up formaldehyde by
the time I—”
He grabbed me hard enough to snap bones, hauling me
straight off my feet. I shrieked, groped behind me for his neck
and throttled until I heard rattling teeth, felt blowflies and
carrion beetles turn to mush and juice beneath my fingers.
He wrenched my hand away and threw me in the damp riverbank dirt, trying to straddle me,
but my legs are stronger
and a few kicks sent him sprawling on a layer cake of dead
leaves. The gang surrounded us to watch, the eagerness for
good bone-breaking fun stronger than any flesh-hunger—all
except Linc, who hung back drawn and worried. Linc’s a
sweetheart, he is, but however book smart he was alive he’s
got no clue about anything that matters. I turned to give him
a little don’t-worry glance, and that distracted second was all
Joe needed to flip me over and force-feed me a heaping
mouthful of dirt.